The feds are coming, the feds are coming

In an interesting twist, earlier this week, my son and I travelled the Battle Road on bikes from Lexington to Concord, the scene of Paul Revere’s famous ride. It was interesting to follow the steps that led to the first skirmish of the American Revolution which took place on April 19, 1775. And it’s interesting to reflect in the place where the flames of liberty were ignited, and concepts of federalism and the limited role of a central government were nurtured.

That ride brought to mind the President’s current push to rewrite education legislation and invoked a federal takeover of schools in this country (see Boston Globe report by clicking here and Newsweek piece by clicking here).

Education has historically been left in the hands of local communities. It’s part of the idea that the governance of education is best done at the local level, where the parents, teachers, administrators, and students are intimately more aware of the needs of their schools. Indeed since colonial times, Massachusetts required the towns to maintain a system of public schools. The statute of 1647 — which is the precursor to G. L. c. 71, Section 1 — required every town with fifty or more householders to appoint a schoolmaster in the town “to teach all such Children as shall resort to him to Write and Read,” and every town of one hundred or more householders or families to “set up a Grammar School, the Master thereof being able to Instruct Youth so far as they may be fitted for the University.”

The federal constitution purposefully says nothing about education. In Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954), a unanimous Supreme Court recognized that “education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments.” And in 1973, the Supreme Court recognized that education is not among the rights afforded explicit protection under our Federal Constitution. San Antonio Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973). In Wright v. Council of City of Emporia, 407 U.S. 451 (1972), the Court noted that “[d]irect control over decisions vitally affecting the education of one’s children is a need that is strongly felt in our society.” As one of the justices in that case observed:

Local control is not only vital to continued public support of the schools, but it is of overriding importance from an educational standpoint, as well. The success of any school system depends on a vast range of factors that lie beyond the competence and power of the courts. Curricular decisions, the structuring of grade levels, the planning of extracurricular activities, to mention a few, are matters lying solely within the province of school officials, who maintain a day-to-day supervision that a judge cannot.

Despite all of this, the President is making a push to impose national standards in education. Indeed, the federal government is offering funding — through a program called Race to the Top — which will reward school districts that adhere to national standards. But national standards, no matter how brilliantly designed, create uniformity and are harmful to creativity. Aside from that, they ignore the good work that is already being done in states such as Massachusetts. To those who still think American schools are bad and need standards, I suggest you review my last post by clicking here.

For a glimpse of some of the more detailed reasons to oppose national standards, consider the following:

• The best defense against national standards
• Feds In The Classroom: How Big Government Corrupts, Cripples, and Compromises American Education
• The case against national standards
• Against National Standards

If the federal government wants to help states and local governments, it can begin by funding the mandates already in place. For a list of those mandates already in place and which are not fully funded, click here. For now, the national standards push should be abandoned and we should revert of the federalist system composed at the end of the Revolutionary War.

American schools do a better job than some may think

To those who think that American schools are so bad, look at the book Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization by Yong Zhao. As the jacket materials note, this remarkable book will forever change the debate about what’s wrong and what’s right with American education and where it should be going.

Based on his own experience as a student in China and as a parent of children attending school in the United States, Zhao skewers conventional wisdom while setting straight the recent history and current state of US schools. To make his case, Zhao explains:

• Why the perceived weaknesses of American education are actually its strengths.
• How reform proponents, business executives, and politicians have misjudged American education.
• Why China and other nations in Asia are actually reforming their systems to be more like their American counterparts.
• What really matters for an education system and what really counts as educational excellence.

With an extraordinary command of facts and thought leadership, Zhao describes how schools have to keep pace with a world that is being dramatically transformed by globalization, the “death of distance,” and digital technology. Instead of falling in line with mandates for standardization, his prescription is for educators to

• Expand the definition of success beyond math and reading test scores.
• Personalize schooling so that every student has opportunity to learn.
• View schools as enterprises that embrace globalization and digital technology.

You can view the slideshow from Zhao’s presentation at the 2009 School Administrators of Iowa (SAI) by clicking here or one viewer’s notes by clicking here.

Former Justice urges more civic education

David H. Souter, retired as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, challenged American Bar Association (ABA) members at the Opening Assembly for the 2009 Annual Meeting to “take on the job of making American civic education real again.”  For video of Souter’s speech, click here. 

When more than two-thirds of Americans cannot even name the three branches of government, they cannot speak up for an independent judiciary, Souter said.  “This is something to worry about” and there is “a risk to constitutional government,” he warned.  Souter said he learned the statistic in a conference convened in 2006 by retired Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Associate Justice Stephen Breyer.

He contrasted the lack of public understanding of the workings of government today with his own civic development as a child growing up in Weare, N.H.  He attended yearly town meetings with his parents, watching community leaders decide issues of local governance, differentiating between legislative and executive functions and between township responsibilities and those of the state.  A respected citizen who had been elected by township residents lead the meeting with fairness and recognition of all viewpoints, in a judicial capacity, he said.  When he reached the ninth grade, the formal civics class taught in school was easy to understand, and not one of his classmates would have failed to identify the branches of government, he added.

The reality that a “majority of the public is unaware of the structure of government,” and fails to understand the notion of separation of powers, is the “root problem we have to face about judicial independence,” Souter said. 

Civic education must be raised to a new power,” he concluded.  It is “the birthright of every American.”

Along these lines, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, in cooperation with Georgetown University Law Center and has developed a Web site and interactive civics curriculum for 7th, 8th and 9th grade students called Our Courts. You can view that site by clicking here. At the ABA conference, Meryl J. Chertoff, Professor at Georgetown University Law School and Director of the Sandra Day O’Connor Project on the State of the Judiciary reported on new online learning tool. You can view that video by clicking here.

As part of my personal commitment to this effort, for the past two years, I have participated in the Constitution in the Classroom project at Franklin High School. Constitution in the Classroom is an effort by the American Constitution Society to bring its members into primary and secondary classrooms to raise awareness of fundamental constitutional principles. In 2009, the classroom discussion focused on the Redding student strip search case which was decided by the Supreme Court in June 2009. The conversations with students have been lively and bring into perspective the role of the courts in their lives.

As Thomas jefferson once observed: “An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight. It is therefore imperative that the nation see to it that a suitable education be provided for all its citizens.”   Those words are critical underpinnings to the need for greater civics instruction in schools.